Can the Ábalos case be compared to the PP's Bárcenas case?

MadridThe report from the Central Operational Unit (UCO) of the Civil Guard, which has cornered José Luis Ábalos, based on evidence that he had at least 95,000 euros of allegedly illicit origin for personal expenses, has given the PP wings. Alberto Núñez Feijóo's party is already talking about a hypothetical "PSOE's secret fund" and "removal of positions"The abundant images of cash and the Socialist Party logo have stirred in the collective imagination the memory of the envelopes of banknotes distributed by the PP treasurer, Luis Bárcenas, in the context of the largest corruption case in Spanish history, the Gürtel case. With this vocabulary, the PP is trying to equate the alleged corruption scheme led by the former Socialist Transport Minister with the case that brought down Mariano Rajoy's government. Now, are they comparable?

An irregular financing structure?

In the case of the PSOE, the Supreme Court investigation has not established the existence of a parallel accounting structure within the party. What exists are the UCO's suspicions, which, for the moment, are insufficient to confirm that there was illegal financing or that the PSOE provided extra pay to officials. The envelopes containing money that appear in the UCO report supposedly correspond to the settlement of expenses for both Ábalos and his former advisor Koldo García, which the party paid in cash.

"Paying in cash is neither illegal nor irregular, and it is not only done to political parties. The Senate, if a senator must travel abroad, pays that allowance in cash, logically providing the ticket or invoice. Spanish government, Pilar Alegría. Last September, in fact, the PSOE informed the Supreme Court that since 2014 it paid 30,000 euros in cash to the former number 3 of the PSOE Santos Cerdán, also accused, as compensation for advance payments by him.

Why does the PP say that they were extra salaries? The UCO has detected that the amounts contained in the envelopes are, in some cases, allegedly higher than the liquidation declared by the PSOE. Specifically, an envelope with money for Ábalos from June 2019 would contain another 500 euros and in another previous delivery, from the beginning of the same year, Koldo and his wife, Patricia Uriz, comment in a A conversation recorded in the report indicates that they would have received approximately 5,500 euros more than the records show.

What happened in the PP? Several court rulings, now final, concluded that there was indeed a black fund in the PP. Bárcenas was sentenced to several terms totaling thirty years in prison for profiting from illegal commissions on public contracts. The party was also found to be subsidiarily liable for benefiting. The former treasurer acknowledged that he periodically made cash deliveries to dozens of PP officials, as recorded in the famous Bárcenas papers—with notes that record illicit payments to Mr. Rajoy, among others. Furthermore, one of the rulings deemed it proven that the PP paid for more than one million euros for the renovation of the PP headquarters on Génova Street with undeclared money from parallel accounting.

The scope and time period

The period under scrutiny regarding Ábalos is primarily between 2018 and 2021, which is when he combined his work as PSOE's organizational secretary with his position as Minister of Transport, and when the irregular contracts that allegedly provided them with this illicit cash were made. However, the scrutiny of his assets by the UCO extends to a period beginning in 2014 and continuing until 2024. According to the report, Koldo still paid expenses for Ábalos until 2023. The envelopes delivered from the party that appear are from the period 2017-2021, amounting to €19,638.97.

As for the irregular benefits from the Gürtel case, with which payments were made to party leaders in secret, they cover the period 1989-2009. That is, a period of twenty years. The fact that it occurred at that time meant there was no conviction for illegal financing of the PP, although the first ruling, in 2018, did mention it. However, this crime was introduced into the Penal Code in 2015, and acts prior to that date cannot be convicted for illegal financing. Although none of the rulings that name the PP as a beneficiary quantify the extent of the extra payments, they are in the millions of euros based on the amounts recorded in Bárcenas's papers.

According to calculations made by the newspaper based on these entries The Country When the scandal broke out in 2013, one of the PP leaders who would have profited the most is Former President Mariano Rajoy, with around 320,000 euros between 1997 and 2008 which other later calculations raised to 370,000. One of the popular accusations in the case, that of ADADE (Democratic Lawyers of Europe), quantified the additional salaries of 40 leaders over 22 years at 22.3 million and increased the amount of money Rajoy pocketed between 1990 and 2011 to 3.4 million.

So far, the investigation into Ábalos has identified 95,000 euros of allegedly illicit origin. He is also accused of having benefited from in-kind compensation, such as the rent of several homes. "There is no increase in assets nor are there exaggerated funds because if they want to emphasize 95,000 euros over ten years, it doesn't even amount to a tax problem," the former Minister of Transport told X. In the case of Bárcenas, the former PP treasurer accumulated some 48 million euros in accounts at Suï.